A love letter of sorts, to the community that became home. Or, closing one chapter, and beginning the next….

It’s strange to talk about Arequipa, HOOP, and my people there in the past tense. As if it’s over. As if I won’t see them again very soon. Because they, and the whole 4 months, feel like such a present part of me. Deeply.

This last month, I’ve thought a lot about love, about people and connection. How they come into your life. How they change you. Some come with a force so strong, it knocks you off your feet. Others come quietly, and make their impact and imprint over time. However they enter your life, they show you your best and your worst, and leave you changed. And in this case, I think that change has been for the better.

How do you say goodbye to people and a place that have changed you, who have healed you in ways you didn’t know you could be healed, that have made you laugh and cry and feel more, love more, than you thought possible?

I don’t know. I don’t know at all how to do it. But I’ve tried to do it well.

My heart, though broken in leaving, is also so full. My capacity for love has increased immeasurably.

Teaching was one of the most challenging, frustrating and truly rewarding jobs I’ve ever done. My kids, my Monkeys, (and really the whole HOOP community) are amazing people. Their tenacity, their humor and sass, their sweetness, their resilience, is utterly beautiful. Saying goodbye to them was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.

I didn’t know how to say goodbye to them. So, I hugged them, and told them I loved them, holding them tight; let the girls braid my hair and wear my sunglasses; danced with them; kissed their mothers on the cheek, telling them in broken Spanish how wonderful they all were, thanked them for everything; ran out to the buses when I couldn’t find two of my girls, and climbed on to hug them; and tried to hold it together as I walked away.

I could write paragraphs about each of my kids, could paint them each as the characters they all could be: The Queen Bee, the Best Friend, the Little One with All the Sass, the One Who is Always So-So, the One Who Wants to be President…but they are so much more than what I could write here. Incredible, whole people, who aren’t just characters. Who have meant the world to me. Who I believe could change the world.

And then there are the Hoopsters (de mi corazon), my Soul Guesthouse-mates (read Soul-mates), y mis Hermanos del Alma…. We weren’t all there for exactly the same reasons, and our paths to Arequipa were different, but there were similar markers along the way for many of us. Similar motivations, desires, frustrations, life events that led us there. To be united in that was absolutely incredible.

Whatever it is you believe, it is pure magic, and proof of something out there, be it God, a plan, a greater being, forces in the universe, or just incredible luck and coincidence that this group of people was brought together in this place at the same time.

Saying goodbye to them, even just until I see some of them again, was heartbreaking— pieces of my heart and soul are with all of them, and in Arequipa. But, as above, my heart is so full, and so healed as I return to the US. And that is due largely to all of them.

I’ve been welcomed home with a lot of love: messages from family friends as I travel; a hand to hold and flowers at the airport, a listening ear at 12am as I cried about saying goodbye to my kids, and mangoes in the apartment cupboard the next morning; dinners and coffee dates with friends, giggles and art projects with my best friend and her daughter, hugs from my parents, cuddles with their dog. And messages from my friends in Peru, making sure I arrived safely, sending love at the holidays, asking how it’s all going now I’m back in the city.

I’m settling back in to NYC quite easily. I’m re-connecting with friends and diving back into acting, excited and reinvigorated. I’m getting to spend actual face time with someone special who fought through four months of FaceTiming with a terrible WiFi connection.

But I’m also still sorting through how to say goodbye for now, and move forward, how to reconcile the life I led there, with the one here; how to make peace with the massive differences in lifestyle, in culture, in what’s important to those around me.

Every now and then, I’ll see something that reminds me of a person, of a place, of an experience in Peru, and it hits me again. Sometimes the blow hurts, makes my heart ache a bit. Other times, it makes me smile, or laugh, or want to dance.

I remember sitting on a bench in Sachaca, talking with two of my dearest friends in my last week there, on a day when the reality of leaving was hitting me hard. We talked about how much it can hurt to open yourself up to experiences like this one, because eventually it comes to an end and the goodbyes are heartbreaking. But, how we wouldn’t dare not open ourselves up to experiences like this one. We wouldn’t want to live a life that is only safe and comfortable, not traveling, not opening up, not challenging ourselves, for fear of the pain of a goodbye. Because to feel these feelings at an end, you know you’ve done something right, that you’ve met some of the best people in the world and had experiences that have challenged you in the best ways, and that it’s meant something huge. And that even though the goodbyes and moving on are difficult, it’s worth it in full.

And I’d do it all over again.

All words by Kate Herman, read more about Kate’s experience in Peru at https://www.kateherman.com/. Photos by Don Lorenozo and Rati Mujumdar.